It's taken Google only a little over two years to make its eponymous virtual assistant smarter than market veterans Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, but the stability of the AI-powered service is not always on par with its versatility and growing pervasiveness on all kinds of smart devices.
There's more than one way to activate your Android phone's Google Assistant, but arguably the most convenient method seems to be currently broken for a worrying number of users worldwide.
What's most vexing is the issue has been reported on many different devices from many different companies, ...Read more ...

One of Android's features is the ability to summon Google Assistant using your voice by saying, “OK Google”. However according to posts on Google's forums , it seems that the hotword detection is not working for many, and that even the option to turn on voice control is not accessible. This does not seem to be a problem limited to a specific brand because users of Xiaomi, OnePlus, Samsung, and more are all reporting the issue. It is unclear as to what could be causing the problem or how widespread it is, but it seems to be serious enough where Google has acknowledged it and that they are...Read more ...